Reading Response #1

Many people assume that technology is to blame for young people’s writing, which it is destroying their English, but that is not the case. Technology is not actually hurting them, but it is improving their writing. In his recent work “The New Literacy”, Clive Thompson suggests that technology has been a huge impact on students and even adults on improving their writing rather than wiping out their ability to be literate. Thompson mentions of two people: University College of London English professor John Sutherland who believes that technology is affecting our language and Stanford University professor Andrea Lunsford who believes that technology is encouraging our writing. Sutherland says, “Facebook encourages narcissistic blabbering” and “texting has dehydrated language into ‘bleak, bald and sad shorthand’” which is led to his belief that technology is the center cause of kids not being able to write and becoming more illiterate. On the other hand, Lunsford’s belief it just the opposite. She believes that technology “isn’t killing our ability to write…it’s reviving it and pushing in bold new directions.” Thompson mentions of Lunsford’s project called Stanford Study of Writing, where she gathered 14,672 student writing samples—from in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, chat sessions and blog posts. She got results of 38 percent which took place outside of the classroom and found that while she was examining the work of her first-year students, “she didn’t see an example of texting speak in an academic paper” even though a lot of students are texting non-stop. One implication of Thompson’s treatment of technology aiding our ability to write is that students are likely to write towards an audience of some kind than without one or just a few people. Studies showed that Lunsford’ students were “less enthusiastic about their in-class writing…it didn’t serve any purpose other than getting a grade.” If the student had an audience to write to, their writing would be greatly impacted by how they show their skills as a writer and what constitutes as good writing. For the students, “writing”, Thompson says, “is about persuading and organizing and debating…even if it is quotidian” like deciding which movie to go to. My own view is that technology gives everyone a way to write and communicate more with friends, family, and other people. For example, I got into Facebook and found that Facebook was a great way for me to e-mail and talk to my family members across the U.S. and half way around the world because it was hard to see each other often. Though I concede that some of the writing that we do online were to be put more on paper, I believe that those who oppose technology being bad for our writing will take some consideration about technology and how it can help out writing instead of hurting it. The issue is important because writing has shaped who we are and how society is keeping in touch with one another. I think with the exponential growth of how many people use technology, whether it is texting, being on twitter, MySpace, Facebook or e-mailing someone, that technology will progress writing even further and will continue to be used in the present and the distant future
Kimberly Pendilla